<p>Syftet var att ur ett fenomenologiskt perspektiv förstå vad det innebär att vara psykotisk. Sex personer med erfarenhet av psykos intervjuades och materialet analyserades med den fenomenologiska EPP (Empirical phenomenological psychological) metoden. Fyra teman identifierades som kännetecknande för den psykotiska upplevelsen: Kontroll i tillvaron speglar känslan av att tappa kontrollen och av att uppleva sig kontrollerad av andra. Det innefattar även upplevelsen att på ett magiskt sätt styra och kontrollera andra. Utanförskap beskriver hur förmågan till social interaktion försvinner i psykosen och hur känslan av ett djupt utanförskap dominerar. Självmedvetandet i psykosen beskriver upplevelsen av att något inte stämmer, hur psykosen anas men inte går att kommunicera. Upplöst tidslighet beskriver hur tillvaron känns meningslös genom att tidsupplevelsen förändras och strävan framåt försvinner. Resultaten pekar på vikten av att omgivningen lyhört registrerar individens signaler på att något är fel för att tidigt kunna upptäcka och hjälpa personer som riskerar att bli psykotiska.</p>

<p>The quality of software systems depends on early activities in the software development process, of which the management of requirements is one. When requirements are not managed well, a project can fail or become more costly than intended, and the quality of the software developed can decrease. Among the requirements management practices, it is particularly important to quantify and predict requirements volatility, i.e., how much the requirements are likely to change over time. Software measures can help in quantifying and predicting requirements attributes like volatility. However, few measures have yet been defined, due to the fact that the early phases are hard to formalise. Furthermore, very few requirements measures have been validated, which would be needed in order to demonstrate that they are useful. The approach to requirements management in this thesis is quantitative, i.e. to monitor the requirements management activities and requirements volatility through software measurement. In this thesis, a set of 45 requirements management measures is presented. The measures were defined using the goal question metrics framework for the two predefined goals of the requirements management key process area of the capability maturity model for software. A subset of these measures was validated theoretically and empirically in four case studies. Furthermore, an analysis of validated measures in the literature was performed, showing that there is a lack of validated process, project, and requirements measures in software engineering. The studies presented in this thesis show that size measures are good estimators of requirements volatility. The important result is that size is relevant: increasing the size of a requirements document implies that the number of changes to requirements increases as well. Furthermore, subjective estimations of volatility were found to be inaccurate assessors of requirements volatility. These results suggest that practitioners should complement the subjective estimations for assessing volatility with the objective ones. Requirements engineers and project managers will benefit from the research presented in this thesis because the measures defined, proved to be predictors of volatility, can help in understanding how much requirements will change. By deploying the measures, the practitioners would be prepared for possible changes in the schedule and cost of a project, giving them the possibility of creating alternative plans, new cost estimates, and new software development schedules.</p>

L'objectif initial de la première partie de cette thèse est d'éclairer par la théorie une pratique communément répandue au sein des practiciens pour l'audit (ou risk assessment en anglais) de méthodes prédictives (ou prédicteurs) : la validation croisée (ou cross-validation en anglais). La seconde partie s'inscrit principalement dans la théorie des processus et son apport concerne essentiellement les applications à des données économiques et financières. Le chapitre 1 s'intéresse au cas classique de prédicteurs de Vapnik-Chernovenkis dimension (VC-dimension dans la suite) finie obtenus par minimisation du risque empirique. Le chapitre 2 s'intéresse donc à une autre classe de prédicteurs plus large que celle du chapitre 1 : les estimateurs stables. Dans ce cadre, nous montrons que les méthodes de validation croisée sont encore consistantes. Dans le chapitre 3, nous exhibons un cas particulier important le subagging où la méthode de validation croisée permet de construire des intervalles de confiance plus étroits que la méthodologie traditionnelle issue de la minimisation du risque empirique sous l'hypothèse de VC-dimension finie. Le chapitre 4 propose un proxy mensuel du taux de croissance du Produit Intérieur Brut français qui est disponible officiellement uniquement à fréquence trimestrielle. Le chapitre 5 décrit la méthodologie pour construire un indicateur synthétique mensuel dans les enquêtes de conjoncture dans le secteur des services en France. L'indicateur synthétique construit est publié mensuellement par l'Insee dans les Informations Rapides. Le chapitre 6 décrit d'un modèle semi-paramétrique de prix spot d'électricité sur les marchés de gros ayant des applications dans la gestion du risque de la production d'électricité.

<p>Background: The education for becoming a registered nurse in Sweden includes compulsory time for clinical practice. The clinical education means an essential part in the students’ personal development. According to regulation for nurses, a registered nurse has the responsibility to supervise nurse students during their clinical placement.</p><p>Aim:. The aim of the examination was to describe nurse students´ experiences of supervision during clinical education.</p><p>Method: The study was an empirical examination based on interviews with seven nurse students.</p><p>Results: The result showed that nurse students wanted to be seen and treated as colleagues, but not used as labour. Students believed that a supervisor was required to have knowledge how the students learn and how to teach the students about the coming role as a nurse, major themes that appeared were: to have time for the student, to promote a good interaction and to respect the students´ situation.</p>

<p>Poor food quality can have large negative effects on zooplankton growth and this can also affect food web interactions. The main aims of this thesis were to study the importance of different food quality aspects in <i>Daphnia</i>, to identify potentially important differences among zooplankton taxa, and to put food quality research into a natural context by identifying the importance of food quality and quantity in lakes of different nutrient content.</p><p>In the first experiment, the RNA:DNA ratio was positively related to the somatic growth rate of <i>Daphnia</i>, supporting a connection between P content, RNA content, and growth rate. The second experiment showed that EPA was important for <i>Daphnia</i> somatic growth, and 0.9 µg EPA mg C^-1 was identified as the threshold below which negative effects on <i>Daphnia</i> growth occurred.</p><p>A field survey identified patterns in the PUFA content of zooplankton that could be explained by taxonomy and trophic position. <i>Cladocera</i> enriched EPA and ARA relative to seston, and <i>Copepoda</i> primarily enriched DHA. In a whole-lake experiment, gentle fertilization of an oligotrophicated reservoir increased the seston P content and the biomass of high quality phytoplankton (<i>Cryptophyceae</i>, high EPA content). This was followed by increases in zooplankton and fish biomasses.</p><p>An empirical model based on data from a literature survey predicted that food quantity is most important for zooplankton growth in oligotrophic lakes, and that food quality factors are more important in eutrophic lakes. Thus, zooplankton growth, and energy transfer efficiency in the food web, is predicted to be highest in mesotrophic lakes. The results predict that the strength and nature of food quantity and quality limitation of <i>Daphnia</i> growth varies with lake trophic state, and that some combination of food quantity and/or quality limitation should be expected in nearly all lakes.</p>

Bayesian Optimization (BO) methods are often used to optimize an unknown function f(���) that is costly to evaluate. They typically work in an iterative manner. In each iteration, given a set of observation points, BO algorithms select k ��� 1 points to be evaluated. The results of those points are then added to the set of observations and the procedure is repeated until a stopping criterion is met. The goal is to optimize the function f(���) with a small number of experiment evaluations. While this problem has been extensively studied, most existing approaches ignored some real world constraints frequently encountered in practical applications. In this thesis, we extend the BO framework in a number of important directions to incorporate some of these constraints. First, we introduce a constrained BO framework where instead of selecting a precise point at each iteration, we request a constrained experiment that is characterized by a hyper-rectangle in the input space. We introduce efficient sequential and non-sequential algorithms to select a set of constrained experiments that best optimize f(���) within a given budget. Second, we introduce one of the first attempts in batch BO where instead of selecting one experiment at each iteration, a set of k > 1 experiments is selected. This can significantly speedup the overall running time of BO. Third, we introduce scheduling algorithms for the BO framework when: 1) it is possible to run concurrent experiments; 2) the durations of experiments are stochastic, but with a known distribution; and 3) there is a limited number of experiments to run in a fixed amount of time. We propose both online and offline scheduling algorithms that effectively handle these constraints. Finally, we introduce a hybrid BO approach which switches between the sequential and batch mode. The proposed hybrid approach provides us with a substantial speedup against sequential policies without significant performance loss. / Graduation date: 2013

A prominent hypothesis in literary studies is that readers, especially those that are fully immersed, engage empathically with fictional characters. This dissertation provides a critique of the Cartesian assumptions embedded in contemporary (cognitive scientific) models of empathy and then goes on to provide an alternative account of empathy based on especially Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology. According to this alternative, empathy does not establish but rather discloses in reflection an already present intersubjectivity from which it is derivative. It is also held that readers who are fully empathically engaged in a literary text lose self-awareness. I provide a critique of this view and present a Husserlian model according to which full engagement with the other and continuation of a certain kind of self-awareness occur simultaneously. This phenomenological alternative is based on the notion that an experiential self-givenness or “mineness” accompanies all my experiences and is prior to any objectifying forms of self-awareness. I then critique Cartesian models of (self-)reflection and self-modification in literary reading and with the help of Heidegger suggest a phenomenological model within which the distinction between modification of beliefs and the modification that is inherent in experiencing becomes understandable as contingent on the form of ontological interrogation that Merleau-Ponty terms “radical reflection”. Finally, I present a series of empirical studies investigating whether the preceding theoretical distinctions are borne out in the experiences of actual readers of literary texts concerned with human finitude. Phenomenological methods, (Kuiken, Schopflocher, and Wild; Kuiken and Miall, “Numerically Aided Phenomenology”) were employed to 1) identify several distinct types of reading experience, 2) spell out how one of those types instantiates ‘existential reading’ as conceived here, and 3) provide convergent and discriminant validation of this type of reading experience. Of particular interest was whether a form of existential reading can be understood as an event during which readers engage the text through a form of empathic engagement that is grounded in an a priori intersubjectivity, that retains an experiential self-awareness or “mineness” simultaneously with empathic engagement, and that supports a non-Cartesian form of “radical reflection” that opens onto an ontological consideration of finitude.

Various methods have been used, including airborne radars, LIDAR, observation of flying birds, towers, tethered balloons, and aircraft to gain both a qualitative and quantitative representation of how heat and moisture are transported to higher altitudes and grow the boundary or mixing layer by thermal updrafts. This paper builds upon that research using an instrumented glider to determine the structure and build a mathematical model of thermals in a desert environment. During these flights, it was discovered that the traditional view of a thermal as a singular rising plume of air did not sufficiently explain what was being observed, but rather another phenomenon was occurring. This paper puts forth the argument and a mathematical model to show that thermals actually take the form of a hexagonal convection cell at higher levels in the convective boundary layer when the thermal acts as if unrestrained by borders as in non-linear cases of free convection.

The quality of software systems depends on early activities in the software development process, of which the management of requirements is one. When requirements are not managed well, a project can fail or become more costly than intended, and the quality of the software developed can decrease. Among the requirements management practices, it is particularly important to quantify and predict requirements volatility, i.e., how much the requirements are likely to change over time. Software measures can help in quantifying and predicting requirements attributes like volatility. However, few measures have yet been defined, due to the fact that the early phases are hard to formalise. Furthermore, very few requirements measures have been validated, which would be needed in order to demonstrate that they are useful. The approach to requirements management in this thesis is quantitative, i.e. to monitor the requirements management activities and requirements volatility through software measurement. In this thesis, a set of 45 requirements management measures is presented. The measures were defined using the goal question metrics framework for the two predefined goals of the requirements management key process area of the capability maturity model for software. A subset of these measures was validated theoretically and empirically in four case studies. Furthermore, an analysis of validated measures in the literature was performed, showing that there is a lack of validated process, project, and requirements measures in software engineering. The studies presented in this thesis show that size measures are good estimators of requirements volatility. The important result is that size is relevant: increasing the size of a requirements document implies that the number of changes to requirements increases as well. Furthermore, subjective estimations of volatility were found to be inaccurate assessors of requirements volatility. These results suggest that practitioners should complement the subjective estimations for assessing volatility with the objective ones. Requirements engineers and project managers will benefit from the research presented in this thesis because the measures defined, proved to be predictors of volatility, can help in understanding how much requirements will change. By deploying the measures, the practitioners would be prepared for possible changes in the schedule and cost of a project, giving them the possibility of creating alternative plans, new cost estimates, and new software development schedules.

Syftet var att ur ett fenomenologiskt perspektiv förstå vad det innebär att vara psykotisk. Sex personer med erfarenhet av psykos intervjuades och materialet analyserades med den fenomenologiska EPP (Empirical phenomenological psychological) metoden. Fyra teman identifierades som kännetecknande för den psykotiska upplevelsen: Kontroll i tillvaron speglar känslan av att tappa kontrollen och av att uppleva sig kontrollerad av andra. Det innefattar även upplevelsen att på ett magiskt sätt styra och kontrollera andra. Utanförskap beskriver hur förmågan till social interaktion försvinner i psykosen och hur känslan av ett djupt utanförskap dominerar. Självmedvetandet i psykosen beskriver upplevelsen av att något inte stämmer, hur psykosen anas men inte går att kommunicera. Upplöst tidslighet beskriver hur tillvaron känns meningslös genom att tidsupplevelsen förändras och strävan framåt försvinner. Resultaten pekar på vikten av att omgivningen lyhört registrerar individens signaler på att något är fel för att tidigt kunna upptäcka och hjälpa personer som riskerar att bli psykotiska.